The town prospered with the opening of the Stockton to Darlington railway opening up the South Durham coal field to sea going vessels especially when the line was extended to Middlesbrough.
Stockton’s early industry was timber, both imported and exported. However, it was iron that would fire the prosperity of the town. We can trace the Bowesfield Steel Company to Dorman Long and the building of the great steel bridges not least that over Sydney harbour. Two engineering companies of significant technological importance were Head Wrightson and Whessoe. The latter was based in Darlington but the former had its origin in the Teasdale Ironworks at nearby Thornaby-on-Tees. The connectivity of manufacturing is perhaps evidenced by the fact that Arthur Head had been apprenticed to Ransome and Sims in Ipswich and Thomas Wrightson has been trained at Armstrong’s in Newcastle. Their company grew to supply the world with blast furnace and steel works plant, constructional iron and steel, pit head gears, picking belts, tipplers elevators, coal crushers, disintegrators and general colliery and mining plant. It went on to be part of the early nuclear industry as I wrote in Vehicles to Vaccines, as indeed did Whessoe.
Another strand of iron working came through William Ashmore who, at his Hope Iron Works, manufactured Gas Holders (the remains of some can still be seen by the Oval cricket ground and near the railway line from St Pancras), Boilers and Bridges. In time, Ashmore was joined by R.S. Benson and Edward Pease who invented the telescopic gas holder. The company became the Power Gas Corporation of which Ludwig Mond took control in 1901. Power Gas and Head Wrightson later became part of Davy International and then Trafalgar House.
The South Durham Iron and Steel company produced a large proportion of the plates used in Newcastle shipbuilding as well as in Stockton’s own industries. One of these was to produce enormous pipes, 30ft in length and 96 inches in diameter welded by a water-gas process.
There were many other iron works which did not decline until the old staples were hit in the mid interwar years. Iron works in Stockton cast rails for the Indian rail system. Examples of such rail stamped 'Stockton 1891' were re-used in the single track railway in what was Persia.
One possibly unsung hero was John Walker who invented the friction match. It was said that Michael Faraday visited Stockton to meet the inventor and to encourage production which Walker declined.
Further reading:
- Robert Woodhouse, Stockton Past (Chichester: Phillimore, 1994)
- Tom Sowler, A History of the Town and Borough of Stockton-on-Tees (Teeside Museums and Art Galleries, 1972)
.jpg)
